


Bind Your Hair with Lovely Crowns

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), FE3H Kinkmeme, Gen, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Personal Appearance as Public Relations, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), the imperial crown of adrestia is a logistical nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25228213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: Edelgard rises from her chair and crosses the room to the looking glass. The weight of the crown is unfamiliar; the lack of motion is stranger yet. She is used to feeling her hair swing loosely around her—but she knew, already, that she could not look like a child any more.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	Bind Your Hair with Lovely Crowns

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**3houseskinkmeme**](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/) [prompt](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/476.html?thread=1603292#cmt1603292) “Edelgard: doing her hair. I keep looking at Edelgard’s post-ts hairstyle, and while its very practical and dignified, I keep trying to figure out how she manages to actually get it to work around that crown. So lets have something about just what it takes to get her hair done up like that. […]”
> 
> Profound thanks to my friend Blu, who isn’t in the fandom and may or may not have ever heard of the Fire Emblem franchise at all, but who does know things about hair—she not only let me fling myself and the concept sketches of El’s post-skip hairstyle at her while wailing HOW DOES IT WORK WITHOUT FALLING OFF HER HEAD, she actually came up with an answer. (That said, I intend to continue assuming it has a few extra wires that give it a little more structure and support, as a general rule.)
> 
> Title from Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s Fragment 81.
> 
> * * *

The crown of the Adrestian Emperor is…

Edelgard frowns at her reflection in the glass. If this were Dorothea’s opera, the singer playing Edelgard would be taller—Hubert, even a pace behind Edelgard, clearly towers over her—and would have, well, _something_ in the way of breasts. Edelgard herself looks like a child playing dress-up in a jeweled headband.

She twists her hair at the nape of her neck and tries to pile it on top of her head, but it slips loose. Still, even that glimpse tells her she’s on the right track. “Could you find a jeweler to modify the crown?” she asks. “It would be better if I were able to wear my hair up with it.”

“Of course, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert says. “A very pragmatic solution.”

“I need to look like an adult,” Edelgard says, still looking at their reflections. The pallor of her hair doesn’t make her look old, only unnatural; if Hubert were any less self-effacing—or less prone to lurking in shadows—people would look past her to speak to him all the time. She wears red not just for Adrestia but to draw the eye, but she will need to do more than draw it now. She’ll need to keep it. “People need to look at me with respect, instead of dismissing me.”

Hubert says, “Anyone who does not—”

“Yes, yes,” Edelgard says, warmed in spite of reason by his loyalty. “But I would rather not have to decimate our own army for doubting their emperor’s wisdom, if I can just choose my attire better to begin with.”

He bows. She lifts the crown from her head and places it into his hands.

* * *

The _new_ crown of the Adrestian Emperor is a glittering masterpiece. Edelgard turns the pieces of it over carefully. The horns on their dark fields attach on rods to a pair of plates suspended from the chain—the sketch the jeweler has attached makes them look as if they’re growing out of the hair coiled above the empress’s ears.

“I am afraid,” she says dryly, “that you’ll be pressed into service as my hairdresser again.”

When she first returned from the clutches of those who slither in the dark, she hadn’t been able to bear the touch of her maids’ hands working the tangles out of her hair. Her old servants had all been replaced after her kidnapping, and the new ones were strangers, and even the tug of the comb was too much. Hubert had been the only person she trusted enough to have at her back.

“As you require, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert says. The perfect blankness of his face is unreadable.

Edelgard frowns at him. “Is it—I can take a maidservant, if you’d prefer. This is not a simple task.”

“Hardly,” he says. “The amount of time it would take to find a trustworthy maidservant _now_ would be immense, and the appearance of bringing a personal servant to battle with you is not what you wish to give.”

He’s right. “One of your agents, then?” she asks. “Surely you trust _them_.”

“Not with you, your Majesty,” Hubert says. It’s very matter-of-fact, as if he _hasn’t_ just said that even his own handpicked spies fall short of whatever standards he sets for people around her. Given that, it’s a marvel that none of their classmates have disappeared mysteriously. “I have no objection to serving as your hairdresser, as well as anything else you require of me.”

It has been a year, but Edelgard has no objections either. She took care of her own hair at the Academy, except when too much axe work left her arms too sore to wield a brush, so that nobody would draw unfair conclusions about Hubert—he might serve her, but he was not a servant. But still, it had been nice, those quiet mornings of closeness.

She suspects there is about to be much less _nice_ in her life even than before. She will hoard whatever she can get. “Very well,” she says. “Shall we begin?”

It has been an exhausting month, with the promise of an even more exhausting year ahead. Edelgard barely even notices the constant dull ache around her head and down the back of her neck any more, but she notices when it eases. Hubert works the comb through her hair with more care than she does; its teeth scrape gently against her scalp, and she lets her shoulders drop and her arms hang loosely from them.

He sections her hair out carefully once it’s combed straight and soft as floss, lifting the top sections over the chain that is all that’s left to suggest a diadem. It is almost too light now, but it certainly doesn’t look too big for her any more.

Just before leaving for the Academy she had worn strings of amethysts and moonstones, a gift from one of her father’s nobles, braided into her hair for New Year’s. She had received the gift in the second-last week of the Lone Moon and Hubert, furiously suspicious, had spent the next ten days practicing braids on a wig rather than trust some newly-hired maid. The final arrangement had been exquisite.

Now there are no gems and a threat is certain instead of merely suspected, but Hubert’s fingers are just as steady as he separates her hair into tiny sections and begins to braid. She feels the tug and the shift as he braids around the chain, catching it in place with her own hair, and then the pinch as he pins that section flat against her head and goes on to another tiny braid. And then another. He goes back over some of the braids, weaving them into each other and then pinning them down again.

Ten minutes pass. Twenty. Thirty-five, and Hubert sets the last pin and goes back to the beginning. “My apologies,” he says, quiet voice loud in the peace of the room. “I have gotten somewhat out of practice.”

“We have time,” Edelgard says. She has let her eyes fall mostly closed, let herself stop thinking for these few moments. “You’ll get back into practice, and I am sure you have some report or other you think I should be listening to that you could be reading me now.”

“Mm,” he says, not denying it. “Next time, perhaps.”

He tugs the pins on the left side of her head out braid by braid, gathering them all just above her ear and tying them tightly together with a bit of unbleached cord.

“Not a single report?” Edelgard asks, pretending to be shocked—a little shocked, in truth. There are always reports, and Hubert always wants her to read them. Or, at least, she knows she must read them, and he appreciates her intention.

“If you insist on a report, your Majesty, we have already been petitioned about grain taxation rates.” Hubert picks up the comb again; she can feel the pull of it through her hair, but not the pressure of its teeth. “The matter can wait until after your declaration, but…”

Edelgard closes her eyes. “Let it wait.” She can’t hold numbers in her head, and she doesn’t want to move for pen and paper.

He twists her hair into a rope, then begins to coil the rope around the plate that will anchor the left horn. As he does the weight of it settles, pressing more firmly against the chain. The metal is light, except for the tiara; the plate is small, and the rod almost certainly hollow. Still, she can feel it tugging against her hair. Hubert takes a liberal hand with the pins, and that counters some of the drag even as it makes her more aware of the artifice of this construction.

After, if she wins, once she has set all of Fódlan on the right path, she will walk bareheaded.

Hubert sets the last pin in place and moves to her right side. The process is the same: the unpinning, the tie, the comb, the gathering and the twist. She feels more balanced with both sides done. Lifting a hand, she finds the rod that will hold the horn.

Hubert sets those in place too, and straightens the tiara across her brow.

“Is it so bad?” Edelgard asks, when he says nothing. Silence from Hubert usually means criticism he is unwilling to voice.

“Merely admiring my own work.” He turns and picks up the comb and a scattering of leftover pins.

Edelgard rises from her chair and crosses the room to the looking glass. The weight of the crown is unfamiliar; the lack of motion is stranger yet. She is used to feeling her hair swing loosely around her—but she knew, already, that she could not look like a child any more.

A stranger looks back at her, with eyes the color of bruises under her bone-white hair. For a moment she feels nothing but fear, looking at this horned woman dressed all in Imperial red, square shoulders and high-heeled boots and a wide flare of skirt out from her waist that changes her silhouette entirely.

She swallows. “You’ve outdone yourself, Hubert,” she says, and at her words the strangeness washes away like fog clearing from the glass. The crown is exquisite, gleaming gold and reflecting some of its color into the pallor of her hair. That’s all it is. That must be all.

* * *

Days when Edelgard doesn’t have to wear the formal crown are easier. The plates can be unhooked, and when she’s only meeting with her friends and advisors it is safe enough to wear just the tiara and chain. They’ve known her looking far less dignified, after all.

She learns to tie the two tails of her own hair and to coil and pin them herself, but she finds she prefers reports discussed with a comb whispering through her hair to reports discussed over a desk. Hubert never objects, so it becomes a part of their morning routine again, regardless of whether she will need the full crown or not.

Evenings are different. The reports are less routine as the war goes on, but the relief of taking her hair out of the pins and twists is always immense. Edelgard can’t remember the last day she didn’t have a headache. It must have been while she was still in Faerghus, brown-haired and innocent. She wishes she still had that dagger.

“What is it _now_?” she asks, despairing, as Hubert glides into her room with only the suggestion of a knock. “Tell me the cardinals didn’t burn another village for loyalty to us.”

“No news at all,” Hubert says. “Perhaps they delegated all trouble to today’s meeting with your lords.”

Tired as she is, Edelgard manages a laugh. “Then what is it, if there’s no report?”

He looks at her with what she recognizes as surprise, though she doubts almost anyone else of their acquaintance would be able to see its traces. “Your hair, Lady Edelgard.”

She hasn’t even managed the energy to start pulling out pins, too afraid that at any moment she might have to go out the doors to her room and be the Emperor again. “Ah. Thank you.”

“I would not neglect this duty either,” Hubert says, oddly serious. “Even without a report.”

The horns come off first, and already she feels lighter. His hands are quick but graceful on the pins, which clatter almost musically into their box. The coils slip loose and fall. He works his fingers through the braids, easing them apart section by section, and then lifts the tiara and chain free.

Still a good twenty minutes in the morning, undone in moments. Edelgard rolls her neck, stretching out the day’s weight, and lets herself slump forward.

She is expecting the comb, breaking up tangles and pain in the same sweeping motion, but instead Hubert’s fingers settle against the back of her skull, where the braids pull tightest. He rubs circles against her scalp as he works the last parts of the braids free—if there even are still any strands of braid left crossing, Edelgard doesn’t know and won’t ask—and she can _feel_ the tension draining down her neck and away.

“Thank you,” she says after a long moment, and Hubert lifts his hands away again.

Only then the comb, and the brush, even softer than the comb. He gathers her hair into a single loose braid that doesn’t pull at all and ties it off with a plain bit of cord.

“There will be reports again tomorrow, I’m sure,” he says, letting her hair fall again.

“I know,” Edelgard says. She gives him a tired smile, and he looks like he’s thinking about smiling back. “I can bear them tomorrow. Thank you again, and goodnight.”

The crown gleams in pieces on the table beside her as she turns, and extinguishes her candle, and makes her way to bed.


End file.
